


the long watch

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [324]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Fingon left Mae and Mae is not happy about it, Gen, Peril, Premonitions, Waiting, inside we have feelings, it's been long as hell, outside the battle rages, this fic honors Election Week for all the American fans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27445816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: At any other time, Sticks could have gazed at the maps on the wall for hours. But maps show the world, and her world shakes and crumbles with each thunderous shot outside.
Relationships: Amlach & Maedhros | Maitimo, Arien & Maedhros | Maitimo, Arien (Tolkien) & Original Character(s), Gwindor & Maedhros | Maitimo, Maedhros | Maitimo & Original Female Character(s)
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [324]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	the long watch

At any other time, Sticks would marvel at this wonderful room. There isn’t a single window. It’s lit not by lanterns, nor by clumsy torches, but by a lamp with a fluted glass chimney and a shining brass bowl. This lamp sits in the center of a massive desk, which is itself a thing of beauty. From the bowl and chimney of the lamp rises a golden dome of warmth. It chases the shadows to the corners and seams of the room, running down the walls with the rivers and roads of the maps that hang there.

At any other time, Sticks could have gazed at those maps for hours. But maps show the world, and _her_ world shakes and crumbles with each thunderous shot outside.

Russandol has made himself so small that even Frog could tower over him, now. A few paces from where Sticks and Estrela and Frog are seated, his knees are drawn up to his chest and his head droops against them. He is shivering, even with a blanket thrown over his shoulders.

Gwindor is standing by the bolted door, alert as a coyote at a gopher hole. He glances back over his shoulder—the twisted one—and sighs, deep in his chest. “Russandol…”

Sticks wishes he wouldn’t speak. Wishes none of them would speak. She wants to slap her hands over her ears and hide in silence. At the same time, she wishes she could _howl_. The hate inside her wants desperately to get _out._ It belongs to everyone; is deserved by everyone. Before tonight, she didn’t hate Fingon. She does now. Scorns him as worse than dirt, for the way he twisted Russandol’s poor fingers, forcing his only hand away.

 _Spiteful, selfish, cruel_ , Sticks chants in her mind, over and over. _Cruel!_

If she isn’t angry, she’ll be crying soon. Will she die crying? She _could._ There’s killers coming. Killers with guns, and knives, and arrows—

(The forest. The river. Blood in the world and the water. The maps might show that river, if Sticks knew where to look.)

Frog whimpers in Estrela’s arms. Frog’s a baby; doesn’t know how to let hate in or out of his mouth; only fear.

And Russandol? Russandol doesn’t make a sound. His left arm wraps around his knees, one of the few shields he has left. The still-bandaged stump of his right arm is crooked against his thigh. This is not the first time Sticks has seen him so broken. She remembers blood-darkened dust. The stolen shirt of a dead man torn in her hands.

The dark one coming down through the quiet paths with a wide, white smile on his face.

Is the dark one outside tonight? Is the hunter, with his hungry eyes?

“Sticks,” says Estrela, “Come and sit with me.”

But Sticks shakes her head. If she hates Fingon, she must hate everyone on the other side of the door—everyone who forces Russandol to love them so desperately, only to leave him in his hour of need. Why must his brothers be out there, fighting? Why must his Fingon?

“Don’t mind me,” Russandol says, muffled against his knees. He lifts his head, his hair wild about his face. Sticks looks away quickly. She doesn’t want to _see_ any more than she wants to hear. Ankle-deep in cold, cold water—the river between them, and all of life behind—

“Are you warm enough?” Estrela asks Russandol. “I have another blanket, here.”

It was Sticks’ blanket, but she cast it off, soon as they came in and set here like a pack of babies. She’d rather Russandol have it anyway.

But Russandol is speaking again, and not to Estrela. “Gwindor,” he says, in a thin, desperate tone that sounds like the worst kind of coaxing, “We mustn’t—we mustn’t let him go.”

“He’ll be all right,” says Gwindor. “And he’s on his way already. No use chasing him.”

“It isn’t like that,” Russandol says. Sticks imagines him breaking with his voice, falling with his voice, catching himself halfway down on something sharp. “This time I—he’ll get himself—” His shivering has grown more violent.

“He won’t,” Gwindor answers stolidly. His knife stays still in his grasp, but the light moves along its edge, and Sticks follows that light with her eyes. “He’s full of vis and vigor. And cooler heads will lead. When I was out there, Finrod was speaking with your uncle.”

“You don’t _understand_ ,” Russandol mutters, and he tries to push himself up, to cast the blanket off, but it is horribly awkward. (Sticks is watching him again.)

“Now, now,” Gwindor says, while Estrela only draws in soft, hurt kind of breath. “How am I to guard the door if you’re fidgeting?”

Russandol goes limp. It isn’t quite a fall or faint, but his head thumps the floor and his legs sprawl outward, defeated. He throws his left arm over his eyes. His breathing isn’t soft, but jagged.

“No, _no_ ,” Frog wails. First peep out of _him_ since Estrela said, _Come with me, now!_ Sticks glares at him, but it doesn’t do any good, because he’s rooting against Estrela’s side, rubbing his face into her shirtfront. She strokes his hair and says,

“Shh, shh.”

Sticks supposes she could also be speaking to Russandol.

Frog’s whining fades, but Russandol keeps crying into his sleeve, so miserably that Sticks feels each harsh, choking sob. Only when the ground shakes, and their ears ring, does Russandol go quiet.

Goes quiet, and sits up. How does Russandol still look like something wonderful beneath blood and dirt, lumps and bruises, or, at present, tears? Sticks always wishes she knew how to make him safe.

“What is it?” Gwindor is being extraordinarily patient. Only took the end of the world to make him so. If they come out of this with their heads up and their feet down, just as they should, Sticks won’t forget it.

“Curufin’s mines,” says Russandol. “They’ve tripped one. They’re trying to surround us.”

“One less of them, now,” Gwindor points out.

“I don’t know how many,” Russandol mutters. “Fuck. _Fuck_.” With his left hand, he pushes himself off the floor a little. His right leg moves and twists as if it can lift him on its own. Sticks knows how much the left leg still troubles him, but fool that he is, he is trying to stand with only half himself in order.

“Stay down,” snaps Gwindor, his makeshift patience fraying at once. “I’ll tie you to the desk if I have to.”

Russandol actually barks a laugh at that. Sticks grimaces. “No sympathy, friend? After all we’ve—”

“No desire to see you capsize,” Gwindor growls. “I’m to watch this door, lest anything break through it. I’m not so quick as the rest of these young whippersnappers, so you’ll forgive me for standing just beside it, ‘stead of fussing.”

“Forgive you?”

“Or not. Hold your grudges close, if you like. Christ, the mouth on you.”

Russandol droops over his knees again.

Sticks twists round a bit to look at Estrela’s face. What she sees there makes her relent, and crawl a little closer, tucking herself against Estrela’s right side.

“Russandol,” Estrela says, “Their heads will be clearer, if they can trust that you are in the safest room they have.”

He doesn’t answer. More gunshots strike the walls, but the walls are made of stone.

“Bad,” Frog says. “Bad, ‘Strela. Is bad.”

“We are all frightened, little one,” Estrela says, petting Frog’s hair just as she was when he cried a few moments ago. “I am, and Gwindor is, and Russandol is, and I know you and Sticks are, too. But we are doing our part by staying here and being quiet and good.”

“Don’t want to be,” Frog says.

“Neither does Russandol,” says Estrela, smiling down at him. “But he is trying. Frog, you may go and sit beside Russandol if you like.”

Sticks is a little sore that Estrela did not say the same to _her_ , but she knows Estrela is as wise as—as an owl about managing both Frog and Russandol. Gwindor too, come to that.

“Yes,” Frog agrees. He slides out of Estrela’s arms and crawls across the floor, like he did when he was smaller, or when they were— _there_ , and sits just beside Russandol’s drawn-up knees.

Russandol picks his head up. “Bairn,” he says, his voice thick.

Frog reaches out with his hand first, patting, then he rests his head on Russandol’s knee, just like Huan does to Celegorm, sometimes. Sticks hopes Huan is all right. He’s a big dog, and a clever one, but dogs aren’t clever enough for guns.

“Stop shouting,” says Frog.

Gwindor clears his throat.

“I didn’t shout,” Russandol protests.

“Yes. Inside.”

Russandol folds his right arm against his belly, likely to keep it away from Frog. Sticks sometimes believes that Russandol thinks his arm gained something ugly when he lost his hand. He always tries to hide it. He doesn’t like to touch things with it, much less people.

Maybe it still hurts very badly, inside and out.

The room is all quiet now. Estrela stands, resolutely, and brings the blanket Frog left behind to arrange half around him, half around Russandol’s ankles.

“Is it pride?” Russandol asks.

Sticks doesn’t know what he means.

“What?” Estrela asks, still stooping.

“To think…to think that it is for me.”

“We don’t know anything, yet,” Estrela says. Then, straightening, “And if…if it is, Russandol, it makes no difference. We would all be just as we are now. Gwindor would guard. _I_ would fuss.”

“Hours,” Russandol says. “There were only hours remaining, I think. An infection in the blood moves quickly.”

“What do you mean?” But Sticks knows Estrela. That is the Voice, as Frog has begun to call it. The Voice means Estrela already understands.

Russandol says, “It would have made not so much difference, either. The worst was already done. And you would be freer, now.”

“Russandol.” The Voice is—sad, more than grim.

“Good thing we stepped lively, then,” Gwindor interjects, pettish again. Sticks shakes her head at him. Stops short of poking her tongue out, as _that_ doesn’t suit the occasion. “Made a proper mountain-goat of myself, not even knowing your odds.”

Sticks has nobody to cling to, nobody to hide her face against. She is huddled, lonely, without even her blanket, for it is in a heap some paces away. She tries very hard not to sniffle. Russandol is talking about the _after_. After the forest, and waking in the awful fog. After the river.

The ugliness is not what they took from Russandol, in that after, but what they gave him.

It is why he did not want to come back. It is about what he thinks is in him, and in the men outside the walls.

“They choose that I live,” Russandol says. His hand hovers over Frog’s head, but he doesn’t quite touch it. “ _He_ chose that I live, when he found me. But when can I do the same for him, or any of you?”

Sticks isn’t a child, a bairn, much as she sometimes wants to be.

“Bear up a little longer, Red,” Gwindor says. “Doesn’t have to be forever. Just for tonight, and we’ll do it alongside you. Everyone’s keeping everyone alive.”

“I hate it here,” Russandol says, in a small voice, and then, all in a rush made awkward by the handless arm he still tries to hide, he embraces Frog, drawing him into his lap. Frog responds at once, linking his hands behind Russandol’s neck and nosing against his collar.

Sticks looks at Estrela. Estrela nods. Sticks crawls the short distance over the floor, much as Frog did, and very gently, or as gently as she can, she links her arm through his unfinished one.

She is careful to keep her touch above the elbow, and though she feels him shaking, he does not flinch. Sticks strokes his sleeve just the same as she pets the kittens, and she says, not in Estrela’s voice but in Estrela’s manner,

“ _Shhh, shh_.”

This is not the forest. This is not the river.

Sticks won’t let him go, this time.


End file.
